COLLEGE ROI CALCULATOR · TOOL 001
Is your dream school worth it?
Pick your school. We run thirty years of paying for it against skipping it and investing the difference — on the colleges’ own reported numbers: FREOPP earnings, IPEDS cost, BEA cost-of-living. No villains, no prescriptions, just the math.
for teens 15-19 · + the parent reading over their shoulder
Loading this selection; no result is available yet.
For University of California-Los Angeles · home California (CA), in-state · 4-year program
Projected net value · by 2060 · real dollars
$663,955
University of California-Los Angeles pays back $663,955 over 30 years.
The math says: yes.
Same school — the residency line moves this number by $1.05M — and flips the verdict.
Keep the calculation. Take it with you.
A printable report of this school and scenario, with the costs, assumptions and modeled results saved together. Delivered by email; use your browser to print or save as PDF.
Your free calculation stays here. This report preserves the same calculation; it does not add personal advice or predict your earnings.
What this college ROI calculator actually computes
Most college ROI calculators multiply median earnings by a career length and subtract tuition. That overstates every school, because it counts neither the wages you gave up to attend nor what those wages would have earned if invested. This one runs the 30-year net present value of attending against skipping and investing the difference, on 30 years at 7.0% real. The receipts are below.
Under the number
Foregone wages, compounded — upper bound
$1.15M
What four years of HS-grad wages ($34,000/yr) would grow to at 7.0% real over 30 years, if you saved every dollar. It’s the ceiling, not the typical case — real savings run 5–15%, so divide by roughly ten for what you’d actually keep. We show the ceiling on purpose.
- Sticker cost (before aid)
- $123,580
- Loan financing
- 60% of cost
- Loan APR
- 6.50%
- Career horizon
- 30 years
- Alt-investment return
- 7.0% real
- HS-grad wage anchor
- $34,000/yr
- Residency
- in-state
- Cost-of-living (BEA RPP)
- 112.2
Median outcome for University of California-Los Angeles — FREOPP earnings, IPEDS cost, BEA cost-of-living. The assumptions above are editable defaults; change the school or state to re-run. Your number will vary.
Common questions
What does this calculator measure?
30-year modeled net difference between attending and skipping college under the calculator’s cost, earnings and compounding assumptions. Institution-average mode retains the existing fixed-dollar and real-rate convention. Program mode uses FREOPP estimated annual earnings at ages 29–31; the estimate’s price year and applicability ten years after entry are not established. This is a scenario under those assumptions, not an observed realized return or FREOPP’s published lifetime ROI.
Where does the data come from?
IPEDS for sticker cost across 3,392 institutions. FREOPP for institution-level median earnings (covers ~49% of the universe; the rest fall back to the BLS national bachelor’s median, $74K). BEA Regional Price Parity for cost-of-living adjustment by state. All public, all citable inline. Data dates and source limitations are documented in our methodology.
Why does my school’s NPV differ from sticker price?
The calculator uses published tuition and room-and-board costs before financial aid, plus loan interest and foregone wages while enrolled. It compares the college path with skipping college and investing the difference over the modeled career horizon, with the home-state cost-of-living adjustment applied to the alternative path’s wages. These are scenario assumptions, not an individual financial-aid estimate.
What counts as a “good” NPV?
Positive. Above zero means the degree path beats the alt-path under these assumptions. The interesting question isn’t yes-or-no — it’s by how much, and whether changing one input you control (school, in-state vs out, financing percentage, where you’ll work) flips the sign.